


forward progress

by alessandriana



Category: Hurog - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/pseuds/alessandriana
Summary: In the back of his mind Oreg knows the Hurogmeten has gone out hunting with his brother who is visiting from Iftahar. Oreg's awareness is weaker the further from Hurog keep they travel, but the rings tethers him, and he still feels it as they kill some game. The horse fights the Hurogmeten, as it always does. The Hurogmeten brings it under control with cruel whip and spur, as he always does.Then a small animal darts unexpectedly under the horse's hooves, and the horse rears, and the Hurogmeten goes flying.
Relationships: Oreg & Wardwick
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	forward progress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [florianschild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/florianschild/gifts).



Oreg isn't paying much attention when it happens. Oh, there's always a part of the back of his mind that checks in on the Hurogmeten every few seconds, knows exactly where he is and what he's doing-- it's a survival mechanism that dates back centuries, to the first time he'd forgotten to check and found something terrible had happened due to his lack of attention (though it's been so long he's forgotten precisely _what_ ). But at the same time he cannot bring himself to think about the man very hard, unless he is specifically required to. No one is ever beautiful when looked at too closely, pores and warts and all, but this particular example of humanity is uglier than most. 

Instead, Oreg is watching the man's nephew Beckram tease Ciarra. Oreg doesn't think it's intended to be cruel, but intention doesn't always equate to effect. When it looks like she needs a place to go, he opens the grate to the sewers just enough to let her through. Ciarra's a good girl. Oreg likes her, as much as he likes anyone. 

In the back of his mind he knows the Hurogmeten has gone out hunting with his brother who is visiting from Iftahar. Oreg's awareness is weaker the further from Hurog keep they travel, but the rings tethers him, and he still feels it as they kill some game. The horse fights the Hurogmeten, as it always does. The Hurogmeten brings it under control with cruel whip and spur, as he always does. 

Then a small animal darts unexpectedly under the horse's hooves, and the horse rears, and the Hurogmeten goes flying. 

Abruptly every bit of Oreg's attention is fixed upon the scene.

Oreg feels it when it happens:

Feels the Hurogmeten hit the tree. 

Feels it when something breaks inside the man. 

Feels the certain knowledge that the Hurogmeten is dying. 

Feels shock, and terror, and shivering relief. 

And, worst of all: hope. 

***

Deep in the caverns beneath Hurog, a dead dragon begins to keen.

***

Oreg can feel the bonds that tie Hurog to the Hurogmeten loosening. Slowly, slower than Oreg would have expected. The man is as unwilling to yield to death as he had been to anything else in life. He makes it back to the keep, carried on a makeshift litter. 

The Hurogmeten's heir is coming back from his own hunt, and has discovered his cousins gathered around the sewer grate. 

Insubstantial tendrils of magic peel off the Hurogmeten-- off the ring he bears-- and begin to affix themselves to his heir, who is even now attempting to pull the sewer grate bodily from its hinges. 

_Idiot,_ Oreg thinks. Maybe. There is something calculated in the way the boy stares at the hinges until Erdrick helps remove the linchpin. Not in his face or eyes, which are as dull and witless as ever. But something in the muscles of his shoulders, the slightest tension, as if he is in some way holding himself back. It's not something anyone else would notice, but Oreg has had many long years to learn to read people. And he has paid attention to this one in particular, the Hurogmeten's heir. 

Or maybe it's just a product of wishful thinking. Oreg can't be certain anymore. 

There _are_ some things Oreg knows about the man.

Point one: He protects his own. He watches over his sister, his mother, his horse, and even the servants, and does what he can to keep them from harm. 

Point two: He is stubborn. He gets up with a broad smile every time Stala knocks him down. He spends hours in the library, though he doesn't seem to understand a word of what he reads. 

Point three, which is the most important: He is kind, even now, even though his father has done his best to beat it out of him. 

(Point four: He looks far too much like Seleg, except for those eyes. Fights like him, too.)

(Seleg was stubborn. Seleg protected his own. Seleg was not kind.) 

***

Below, Ciarra is still making her way through the sewers. It will take her a while yet to get back to the keep proper at this rate. 

The Hurogmeten's heir is following behind more slowly, as he struggles with the tunnel's size. He doesn't give up; keeps going even as his shoulders scrape the walls, and his breath grows short with discomfort and panic. He's covered in muck and starting to bleed. At one point he reaches a wider part of the tunnel; he could turn around there, go back. He doesn't. 

The part of the tunnel Ciarra is in sits directly above the dragon's chambers. 

Every once in a while the Hurogmeten's heir calls out "Brat!", a note of pleading in his voice. 

The dragon that Seleg killed is still keening, half song half sorrow.

Oreg makes no conscious decision, but, like his physical body, the keep sometimes reacts for him without thinking. A doorway opens beneath Ciarra. She falls through to land in the cavern below with a gentle thump.

***

(Seleg had made Oreg hold the dragon down as he'd muzzled her, as he'd pierced her wings and manacled her feet and shackled her magic. She'd fought and fought but Oreg and Seleg together were stronger than she was.

Eventually she'd stopped thrashing in her bonds. Eventually she'd stopped moving at all.)

***

The Hurogmeten's life continues to seep out like sand from an hourglass. Not too much time left now. Enough of the magic has released. It's time to go retrieve the ring. 

Oreg weaves power around himself like a cloak so that no one sees him when he appears at the Hurogmeten's side. Duraugh is directing the servants to get blankets and pillows for a bed next to the fireplace. Stala has gone for the Hurogmeten's wife. There are others in the room, but no one wants to get close. For a moment the Hurogmeten is effectively alone. 

His eyes light with rage when Oreg appears. Rage, and fear. He knew he was dying, but Oreg can see that this is the first time he really _believes_ it. "You," he rasps, all malice. "Come to take it then, have you?" 

Oreg kneels by the bed, carefully just out of reach. "You swore an oath," he says. 

"As if you need to remind me of _that_." The Hurogmeten clenches the fist that wears the ring and there's still enough magic between it and him to bite into Oreg, _ripping tearing agony_ , and he falls forward with a loud cry that no one but the two of them can hear. 

(This Hurogmeten likes it when he shows his pain, and Oreg has been his too long to break that habit just yet. He will have to learn new habits, soon. Or re-learn old ones. He wonders what they'll be.) 

Below, the Hurogmeten's heir is still crawling, though the tunnel he is in won't lead him to his sister any longer. The magic responds to Oreg's thoughts and drops him into another tunnel, but Oreg forgets, he's not thinking, he's distracted by the pain, and it's too small for the boy, he can hardly move and he's starting to cry and his arms are trapped and--

(Seleg hadn't truly gone wrong until he'd felt himself trapped, until the sea invaders had come and his people had started dying and he'd thought he was going to lose Hurog. Oreg knows what it's like to feel trapped, to feel bonds closing around you, the walls closing in and _no way out no end in sight no help coming--_ )

The Hurogmeten releases Oreg finally, or the magic has faded enough that he can no longer control it. Oreg comes back to himself panting, little whimpers on every exhale. His first thought is for the boy trapped in the sewers, and he reaches out to rescue him--

\--only to find, unexpectedly, that the Hurogmeten's heir has managed to free himself. Is moving again, slowly, so slowly. 

But he's making forward progress. 

There hasn't been forward progress in Hurog in-- years.

It gives Oreg the strength to lift his head again. He looks up at the Hurogmeten (soon-to-no-longer-be), fills his lungs with a clean breath of air. "V-vented your spleen, old man?" 

The Hurogmeten nearly lifts off the ground at that, but he's forced back down as the broken parts of his body scrape together. This time, when he tries to use the ring against Oreg, he can't. The magic is nearly all transferred. 

There is blood in his teeth. Oreg smiles a little at the sight. 

It is a singular pleasure to reach out and slide the ring off his finger. Oreg has done this many times. The platinum catches the light strangely. (It grows a little more worn every year, a little smoother under his fingertips. Oreg remembers it when it was new, when the decoration showed clearly a dragon curled around it, biting its own tail.) 

The former Hurogmeten does not fight him-- cannot fight him. Cannot hurt him. Can't do anything but gasp for air. "Little viper," he spits. 

Oreg's lips turn up at the corners. "Wrong breed of serpent," he says in a singsong voice, and stands, ring cupped in his hand.

Then he vanishes. It's time to see what kind of man this new Hurogmeten is going to be. 

***

In the caverns below, a dragon is singing.


End file.
